"In a small, foundering town in central New York, Molly Howe grows up to be a seemingly ordinary but deeply charismatic young woman. As a teenager, she has an affair with a much older man - a relationship that thrills her at first, until the two of them are discovered and she learns how difficult it can be to get away with such a transgression in a small town. Cast out by her parents, she moves in with her emotionally enigmatic brother, Richard, in Berkeley, California.

At her lowest moment, she falls in with a young art student named John Wheelwright. Each of them believes - though for very different reasons - that this is the love that can save them. Then Molly, after being called home for a family emergency, disappears.".

"A decade later, John has gone on to a promising career at a "cutting edge" advertising agency in New York. He seems on a familiar road to success - until he wanders into the path of Malcolm Osbourne, an eccentric advertising visionary who decries modern advertising's reliance on smirking irony and calls for a popular art of true belief and sincerity. Toward this end, Mal founds - and invites John to join - a unique artists' colony-cum-ad agency called Palladio, in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The risky, much-ridiculed venture brings them undreamed-of fame and influence. It also brings, literally to their door, Molly Howe."--BOOK JACKET.